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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
US to Provide $48B to Fight AIDS, Malaria, TB
FrontLines: August 2008
By Ben Barber
President Bush signed a bill July 30 providing $48 billion over five years to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The lion’s share of the money—$39 billion—will more than double the $15 billion spent since 2003 under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
PEPFAR has been widely recognized abroad as a successful example of U.S. foreign assistance
on par with the post-World War II Marshall Plan. It placed 1.7 million people on lifesaving antiretroviral medication. More than half of PEPFAR’s $4.6 billion budget in 2007 was spent through USAID.
Africans line up for AIDS care and treatment provided through U. S. assistance, which was nearly tripled to $48 billion for thenext five years under a bill signed July 30 by President Bush.
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The bill signed by the president
is called the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States
Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008.
It authorizes $39 billion for HIV/AIDS, $5 billion for malaria, and $4 billion for TB over five years. The massive bill gives USAID:
- joint responsibility with the Global AIDS Coordinator to use HIV/AIDS funds to cover food and nutrition.
- a lead role in helping developing countries train health workers
- confirmation of the Agency’s leadership in fighting malaria over five years.
- leadership in international TB funding for five years.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and beyond, PEPFAR is saving lives,” said First Lady Laura Bush at the White House signing.
She said an HIV-positive boy, Raphael, was orphaned at the age of 3 and near death when he first started antiretroviral treatment.
“Now at the age of ten, Raphael told me he was first in his class and he was planning on attending the University of Zambia,” said the first lady.
President Bush said: “This
Act is going to save millions of people.” It is named after Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde, former Democratic and Republican chairmen, respectively, of the house Foreign Affairs Committee.
The president recalled how HIV/AIDS raged out of control
in the 1990s, and in Africa, life expectancy fell by as much as 15 years in Botswana. But PEPFAR blunted the pandemic. When launched in 2003, 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving antiretroviral treatments.
Today, U.S. funds support treatment
for nearly 1.7 million people in the region— and tens of thousands
more around the world, from Asia to Eastern Europe—leading two years ago to the first annual decline in the number of AIDS deaths since the disease was identified in the 1980s.
PEPFAR has also supported care for nearly 7 million people, including millions of orphans and vulnerable children. To date, medicine provided by PEPFAR has allowed nearly 200,000 children
in Africa to be born HIV-free.
Bush also said that U.S. funds help prevent many new infections through a policy known as “ABC” or Abstinence, Be faithful, and use Condoms. The global number of new infections was down to about 2.7 million people in 2007 from a peak of about 5 million new cases annually in the early 2000s, according to a report released in July by the U.N. AIDS agency.
“We’ve achieved more in the past five years than in the previous 20 years,” said Peter Piot, the agency’s executive director. “But if we relax now, it would be disastrous.
It would wipe out all of our previous investments.”
The new funds Congress approved will support treatment for at least 3 million people and prevent 12 million new HIV infections
worldwide, Bush said. It will support care for 12 million people affected by HIV/AIDS, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children. And the bill will train at least 140,000 new health care workers to provide HIV prevention,
treatment, and care.
The bill will increase the President’s Malaria Initiative—housed inside USAID—with $5 billion in new funds; and it commits $4 billion to fight tuberculosis,
the leading killer of Africans living with HIV.
The bill passed the House by a 303-115 vote and the Senate by a vote of 80-16. ★
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